The Egyptian hieroglyph serves as a phonogram representing the triliteral consonant sequence ', and appears in Gardiner's sign list as number F35. It appears in the Egyptian word for "perfect, complete" (with the extended meanings of "good, pleasant, well, beautiful"), which has a reconstructed pronunciation of according to Loprieno. The hieroglyph has a conventional Egyptological vocalization of '.
The triliteral Egyptian hieroglyph F35 ('nfr') has sometimes been explained as a representation of a lute; however, Egyptologists today no longer consider this hypothesis likely. Rather than a lute, the hieroglyph is actually a representation of the heart and trachea. It originally may have been the esophagus and heart. The striations of the windpipe only appear in the hieroglyph following the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The lower part of the sign has always clearly been the heart, for the markings clearly follow the form of a sheep's heart.
The use of the hieroglyph ' in the word for "good, beautiful" is attested in Old Egyptian in the Pyramid Text of Unas, where it could appear alone to represent the word, or with phonetic complements ð or ðÂÂÂðÂÂÂ.
With this meaning, it was incorporated into many names in Ancient Egypt. Examples include Nefertiti, Nefertari, and Neferhotep.
Some scholars suggest that it was used in ancient Egyptian construction where ' was used to denote 'level zero' of a building and in accounting where ' would refer to a zero balance. This last usage used the hieroglyph alone as an abbreviation for ' "depletion".
The hieroglyph was also used in a particle ' meaning "not at all, not even" infrequently in Middle Egyptian.